"That's generally the way with men that turn up their noses at vocal music.
"Well, he got no better so rapidly that next day he was occupying a front seat at the biggest delirium triangle matinee you ever heard of, and was the sole proprietor of the biggest aggregation of seal-brown tarantulas and variegated caterpillars and imported centipedes that ever exhibited in Columbia's fair domain.
"Every little while he'd nail some diabolical insect crawling up his sleeve or gently walking through his hair, and then he'd yell like a maniac and pray and swear like a hired man.
"The atmosphere seemed to be level-full of bumblebees as big as a cook-stove, and every time they'd cuddle up to him of sink on him with their sultry little gimlets, Katooter would jump up and whoop like a Piute medicine man trying to assuage a wide waste of turbulent cucumber.
"At these times Katooter would lay aside his wardrobe, and, throwing me into the fire-place and Timberline under the bed, he would wander forth into the starlight, with the thermometer down to 37 degrees, and wrapped in nothing but his surging thoughts.
"By the time Timberline and me would get up and swab the cobwebs and cinders out of our eyes, Katooter would be half way up the gulch and lighting out like a freckled Greek slave hunting for a clothing store.
"First along we used to run after him and try to tire him out and corral him, but he was most too skipful, and apparently so all-fired anxious to put all the intervening distance he could between himself and the fuzzy tarantulas and fall style of centipede, that he made some pretty tall time, considering the poor trail and the light mountain air.
"Then another thing; when we got to him he was so pesky mean to hang on to.
"You've probably tried before now, when you was small, to catch the boy who tied your shirt to the top limb of a dead tree, and you have thrown all your energy into the effort, but you decided after awhile to wait till he got his clothes on before you punished him.
"That's the way it was with Katooter. He was the smartest man I ever tried to gather into the fold. We'd think we had him, and all at once he'd glide between our legs like a yaller dog and laugh a wild kind of laugh that would run the thermometer down 13 degrees, and away he'd glimmer up the trail like a red-headed right of way.